Newsletter 179: Apr 3, 2017

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Article of the WeekDoes Doing the Same Work Over and Over Again Make You Less Ethical?New research suggests that routine tasks with little "sequential variety" cause employees to be more likely to behave unethically. The authors theorized that doing the same task repetitively triggers the activation of "type 1" thinking processes, i.e. the default thinking system associated with quick, automatic and self-interested decision-making, and that switching the order of tasks even slightly would cause employees to be more alert and deliberate. Studies showed that participants exposed to high variety tasks in a first round were less likely than those exposed to low variety tasks to cheat on tasks in a second round, and that the high variety group used more deliberate decision-making, suggestive of "type 2" systems thinking.